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Wild Fruit

Margaret Wilmot

A Hot January

First publication: October 2005

http://badosa.com/p147

The wild fruit forests of

the Ili Valley, where

a tangle of apples,

pears, plums, apricots and

other, berrying trees —

hawthorn, rowan, the like —

hang on high slopes I see

in that geography

of the mind as sunlit

uplands; Jerusalem

and its depths and layers,

sun and stones and belief

which go so deep nothing

may be disentangled,

and how that farewell called

over the dark lagoon

as Daniele’s boat sweeps

out and turns toward Venice,

“Ci vediamo a

Gerusalemme,” can

encompass an entire

shorthand of desire: That’s

what I’m trying to find

the words for. Neruda’s

escape through the Southern

Andes; travelling north up

California, mission

to mission on horseback

in the days before gold —

It’s desire which locates

these places I have not

seen, journeys I have not

taken, on the mind’s map

next to that long lift from

Florence to Rome, pillion

on a Vespa, when in

an eternal present

we wound along small roads

around olive-covered

hills, stopping only once

for a cappuccino.

The rosy-cheeked driver

came from Argentina,

long before I went there,

and met other people,

who talked books and took me

on a picnic into

the Andes outside of

Mendoza, which had air

like the Napa Valley,

not far thinking as crows

from that high place of light

and leaves and the clearest

water; the children swam

before we went on to

the mission, and picnicked

saying, Just look, that’s life,

the dedication: We

three met so many years

ago in Padua

where this St. Anthony

had his shrine. Now that friend

has died. Yet it doesn’t

seem so as the boys climb

higher in the branches

overhead and dancing

light filters the easy

chat, the laughter, Sukie

always had us laughing.

A postcard on my desk

shows a subdued farmyard

where a red tree blazes.

Curiously, this painting

makes me think of Sukie —

maybe the tree’s ardour

reminds me of her hair

when we first met; I had

never seen so rich, so

silky an auburn, and

in Padua’s stone streets

she blazed. With her one saw

paintings in a fresh way,

even Gauguin, never

a favourite, one suspects.

Now there’s a traveller who

made amazing journeys

which pull me not at all —

and just what is it that

pours all its energy

through you, and pulls, and there

you are in a high fruit

forest where light filters

through branches of apples,

apricots, plums, pears which

catch your hair and tangle?

What lays the ground for play

between a single mind

and the fertile moment?

The priest sets his torch on

the small table which seems

the only furniture

in what feels oddly like

a ballroom; cavernous

darkness presses all round.

Someone told me I’d find

accommodation here,

and I do: the priest gives

me permission to spread

my sleeping-bag, but first —

I take a seat, relieved

and grateful, if galled with

myself, God, how stupid —

“Tell me,” he says, “what you

are doing knocking at

a sailors’ hostel in

Buenos Aires?” He might

well add, “at midnight.” I

too have been wondering.

There isn’t much to say.

“I’m ashamed,” I begin,

“I shouldn’t let these things

happen, not anymore.”

His face in torchlight might

almost be a portrait,

a person you would like

talking to — and I try

to answer his questions

honestly. Headlights flash

by the huge plate windows.

Lying awake later

on the wooden floor, I

tell myself this is it,

no more just — following

the moment, the feeling,

no more dreaming. Wake up.

Sukie’s just spent four days

getting to Taranto

and back. “Why don’t I learn?

Yes, lovely.” She accepts

a glass of wine. “It was

far too far. Yet” — her face

lights up — “there’s a magic

in getting off the train

at dusk into that warmth

and breeze, the piazza

alive with light movements,

people coming and going...”

Her words spin us all back

to that world still stirring

in warm and transparent

currents beneath the skin,

this sea which stirs, and pulls,

and may sweep us elsewhere

and back, so suddenly...

Sukie is telling us

of Taranto before

I ever hear of wild

fruit forests, and a long

time after that strange chat

painted on the dark in

Buenos Aires, but they

are charted together

on the map which never

stops changing, the real map,

which first took bearings when

a child was climbing high

into walnut branches

those years before the groves

fell to developers,

and we all came to pick.